About this Case
These cases involved efforts to prevent the mayor of a California city from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. At issue was enforcement of California’s Family Code provisions defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The trial court ruled that the code provision violated equal protection under the California constitution. The Appellate Court ruled the provisions were constitutional. The cases were appealed to the California State Supreme Court.
Summary of NLF's Brief
In our brief, we argued that the California supreme Court should affirm the Court of Appeal’s ruling. We reasoned that although marriage itself is an established fundamental, the right to marry a person of the same sex is not. Further, we noted that the United States Supreme Court had not “conferred the fundamental right to marry on anything other than a traditional, opposite-sex relationship.”